World entering a new dark age

To the editor

Anyone who has paid to have their pet implanted with the Home Again recovery chip might as well get ready to be implanted with the same thing. I'm no religious nut nor am I a left-winger but surely people of both sides can see the danger of microchip technology. The Home Again Web site would have you believe that there is no danger. Posted are success stories about pets that were found along with statistics that are chilling in their accuracy and unconcern. Through the guise of finding lost pets, America -- nay, the world in general -- has entered a new dark age.

Read the "success stories" and the stats, then replace every mention of the word "pet" with "child" and one can easily see this technology going terribly wrong. First, it will marketed as a child recovery system; a lost child will be reunited with his family and everything's swell! Then, as time goes on, it will be abused and used to track your every move as we evolve into an efficient and sterile society completely devoid of any basic human instinct or emotion, good or bad É where you'll be taken away in the night for any infraction against the state.

As terrible as it sounds, finding any number of lost children or, in this case, pets, is not worth the dehumanization of an entire planet. It just isn't.

RICHARD CASON, Cape Girardeau